A Tale of Two Quests

Before he was able to say or do anything, he was thrown to the ground by a terrible shaking of the earth beneath his feet. It was the most powerful jolt he had ever felt. A rumbling roar rose up from the sea below. A blast of fire shot up from beneath the cliff’s edge and far into the inky sky. The heat from it was hot enough to inflict on his face a painful sensation of being singed. He shut his eyes to protect them. When he opened them again, he saw billows of smoke rising, obscuring the remaining light from the terrible flame.

So what is my new book about?

The book’s name, by the way, is The Three Towers of Afranor. I keep finding that I am very bad at mentioning the title when communicating about it online. I suppose it’s not so important on this page since there is a nice image of the cover (which includes the title) prominently displayed off to the right. On the other hand, these blog posts get replicated in other places where readers do not have the benefit of the various images and links on my book blog, so I should do a better job of keeping that in mind.

So what is The Three Towers of Afranor about?

When talking about it, I have been joking that it’s basically the same story as my first book, Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead. What is supposed to make that humorous is that the first book takes place in a very real time and place and is meant to have a certain degree of realism, while the second book is a sword-and-sorcery tale set in a totally-made-up world that has monsters and a sorcerer. On the other hand, my “joke” is not completely off the mark. You see, I did most of the plotting and a fair amount of the writing of The Three Towers of Afranor while finishing up Maximilian and Carlotta Are Dead, and the two stories definitely had an impact on each other. For example, they both have young male protagonists and involve seemingly hopeless quests in foreign countries. Astute and interested readers are free to identify additional parallels.

When it comes down to it, I find I am hesitant to go into too much detail about the new book’s story. I am not trying to be overly cute. It is just that I put in a few twists—or at least I attempted to—early in the book and it is probably more enjoyable to discover them in the reading. Yes, I am trying to avoid spoilers. So probably the best summary (and an admittedly vague one) is the one I wrote in this space a couple of days ago: It has action, adventure, swashbuckling heroes, a warrior princess, an evil sorcerer, monsters—and even a bit of romance. The book is mainly meant to be fun and entertaining, which is not to say that I didn’t try to slip a few serious themes into the story. As with Max and Carly, there are some obversations on what it is like and what it means to be young and male. At the same time, because this story is more epic in scale, there is a bit more variety in the characters, including some female ones, a demographic all too under-represented in Max and Carly.

Indeed, the story of the three towers is one that has been with me for an awfully long time. Remind me to tell you how it was born and how it has evolved over many years.